What a way to spend a day. On Friday August 24, Four Metamenders, Three Enquisitives, a couple of amazing Metamend clients and I took part in the annual charity golf tournament held by the Vancouver Island Advanced Technology Centre.
The event, which was supported by Metamend as a hole-sponsor brought hundreds of representatives from dozens of Victoria’s most successful tech firms together, a rare and pleasant experience few of us get to experience often enough. It raised tens of thousands of dollars to go towards cancer research in our communities. Held at Bear Mountain, the premier golf resort on Vancouver Island, the event was an amazing success.
Metamend sponsored the straightest drive contest. A faint yellow chalk line stretched down the fifth fairway, starting about 100-yards in front of the tee-blocks. The golfer who put his or her ball closest to that line or, in case of tie, furthest won a $2500 website optimization and promotion appraisal. The golfer who struck furthest away from the line won a free sleeve of Metamend labeled balls. I promptly lost my sleeve on the following hole. To be blunt, nobody from either Team Metamend or Team Enquiste came close to winning that prize.
For us, the longest, straightest and apparently most dangerous drive came somewhere on the seventh hole. I was playing with Team Enquisite and can absolutely attest that none of us had been shooting particularly well, up until that point. It is important to note that the golf carts up at Bear Mountain come complete with GPS tracking of virtually everything happening anywhere near that cart. We could clearly see that Team Metamend was 250 yards ahead of us, well out of what we considered the “danger zone†of our drives.
No danger, no problem right? That was just before Metamend co-founder, (now Enquisite CEO) Richard Zwicky rediscovered his swing. Apparently Richard’s drive blasted between Metamend co-presidents Todd Hooge and Glenn Convey at velocity speed. They heard the ball whoosh through and stared in amazement as it landed a full 75 yards further down the fairway. A terse and edgy cell phone call told us they were impressed and unimpressed at the same time.
Though we almost took out one or both of the Metamend presidents, the day was a blessing in relaxation and team building. Several of us had spent the previous five days in San Jose attending the largest and most intense annual search marketing conference, Search Engine Strategies SJ07. Alex, Glenn, Murray, Richard and I had all arrived back in Victoria scant hours earlier.
Anyone who has attended previous search marketing conferences will understand the mental and physical effort they demand. More than a series of lectures, SES shows are filled with client meetings, innumerable industry networking events and legendary dinner and after-parties. A typical conference day stretches from 7:30 in the morning until after midnight and one is working as a representative of their company the entire time. At SES SJ07, the entire team worked hard. We were tired, both road weary and intellectually drained. A day of golfing with our finest local tech colleagues and doing so for a very good cause was the best way to come back from the conference.
Metamend is proud to have taken part in the tournament and happy to be able to help facilitate important community building events. If only we could be half as happy about our golf scores. The Enquisite team did quite well, placing in the Top5 mainly due to Richard Zwicky’s regular 300+ yard drives. How did Team Metamend fare? Let’s just say they had a great time and here are some images to prove it.
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